How could real time VAT payment work?
• Funds would be automatically transferred from the merchant’s bank account to the tax authority on a net basis once per day, based on all transactions completed that day, with corresponding tax reclaims and refunds automatically credited back within a 24 hour period. • A VAT purchasing card could be used by each business, linked to their unique VAT ID, to simplify the electronic transaction process. • New national servers in each of the 27 EU countries controlled by the national Tax Authorities would be linked to existing legacy systems to produce detailed transaction reports and watch for fraudulent activity. Each national server would be linked to an independent central European ‘clearing house’ server to deal with intra-EU transactions.
